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Native vegetation of the NSW south coast, escarpment and southeast tablelands was classified into 191 floristic assemblages at a level of detail appropriate for the discrimination of Threatened Ecological Communities and other vegetation units referred to in government legislation. Assemblages were derived by a numerical analysis of 10832 field sample quadrats including 8523 compiled from 63 previous vegetation surveys. Past bias in the distribution of field data towards land under public tenure was corrected by extensive surveys carried out on private land. The classification revises and integrates the units described in recent vegetation studies of Eden, Cumberland Plain and Sydney-south coast into a single, consistent classification. Relationships between floristic assemblages and climate, terrain, substrate and vegetation structure were used to map the distribution of communities prior to clearing at 1:100 000 scale. The extent of clearing was mapped using interpretations of remote imagery (1991–2001) from previous work, standardised and merged into a single coverage and supplemented with additional work. Profiles for each assemblage, which we term ‘communities’ or ‘map units’, describe their species composition, vegetation structure, environmental habitat, the extent of clearing and conservation status. Lists of diagnostic species were defined using a statistical fidelity measure and a procedure for using these for community identification is described. Approximately 66% of the study area retains a cover of native vegetation, primarily in areas with low fertility soils and dissected topography. Communities subject to over-clearing (>70%) are concentrated in a few large areas characterised by clay/loam soils and flat to undulating terrain. These include the Sydney metropolis, Wingecarribee Plateau, Illawarra Plain, Shoalhaven floodplain, Araluen Valley and Bega Valley, and various smaller river valleys. Forty-one percent of remaining native vegetation is protected within conservation reserves while 31% occurs on private land, 20% in State Forests and 8% on other Crown lands. Forty-five Threatened Ecological Communities (TECs) were recorded in the study area. The majority of TECs are represented by a single map unit, although in some cases a TEC is included within a broader map unit. Twelve TECs are represented by combinations of two or more map units.
Clearing of native woody vegetation in the New South Wales northern wheatbelt was mapped for the period 1985–2000. The study area comprises the Moree 1:250,000 scale map sheet and portions of adjacent map sheets. Unpublished draft mapping of native woody vegetation types, based on 1985 aerial photography and a large set of floristic data from field surveys, was used as a baseline for this study. Mapping of clearing was carried out by intensive visual interpretation of Landsat TM satellite imagery. Systematic validation, which compared the satellite interpretation to low-level aerial photography at randomly allocated point locations, showed that the method was highly accurate in detecting vegetation clearing including in the open woodlands and shrublands that characterise much of the study area. Comparisons with previously published mapping of statewide clearing patterns, based on an automated classification of Landsat TM imagery, showed that our intensive visual interpretation detected substantially more clearing. Average annual clearing rates were 8 times higher that those derived from the previous mapping.
Results of the study show that substantial clearing of native woody vegetation is continuing in the northern wheatbelt. Over 110,000 ha of native woody vegetation were cleared between 1985 and 2000. Clearing rates were highest in the four year monitoring period that preceded the introduction of the Native Vegetation Conservation Act. The subsequent two year monitoring period saw substantially lower clearing rates, though further monitoring is needed to determine if this trend will continue. An analysis of spatial patterns highlighted continued high rates of loss in the most depleted parts of the study area. Results for individual vegetation types indicate that regrowth open shrublands and woodlands and Coolabah (Eucalyptus coolabah) dominated woodlands were the most heavily cleared.
Gene trapping is a method of generating murine embryonic stem (ES) cell lines containing insertional mutations in known and novel genes. A number of international groups have used this approach to create sizeable public cell line repositories available to the scientific community for the generation of mutant mouse strains. The major gene trapping groups worldwide have recently joined together to centralize access to all publicly available gene trap lines by developing a user-oriented Website for the International Gene Trap Consortium (IGTC). This collaboration provides an impressive public informatics resource comprising ~45 000 well-characterized ES cell lines which currently represent ~40% of known mouse genes, all freely available for the creation of knockout mice on a non-collaborative basis. To standardize annotation and provide high confidence data for gene trap lines, a rigorous identification and annotation pipeline has been developed combining genomic localization and transcript alignment of gene trap sequence tags to identify trapped loci. This information is stored in a new bioinformatics database accessible through the IGTC Website interface. The IGTC Website (www.genetrap.org) allows users to browse and search the database for trapped genes, BLAST sequences against gene trap sequence tags, and view trapped genes within biological pathways. In addition, IGTC data have been integrated into major genome browsers and bioinformatics sites to provide users with outside portals for viewing this data. The development of the IGTC Website marks a major advance by providing the research community with the data and tools necessary to effectively use public gene trap resources for the large-scale characterization of mammalian gene function.